


watcher of the eternal flame

by transstevebucky



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, Gen, M/M, Minor Character Death, Past Child Abuse, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Protectiveness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-18
Updated: 2018-03-18
Packaged: 2019-04-03 21:46:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,811
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14005482
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/transstevebucky/pseuds/transstevebucky
Summary: The first person Daryl ever admitted his past to was a ten year old girl who’d been through the same thing.





	watcher of the eternal flame

**Author's Note:**

> i keep getting emotional about daryl as a whole so uhh have this thing i wrote in like. an hour 
> 
> possible triggers: descriptions (fleeting) of abuse daryl suffered as a child, canon-typical violence 
> 
> title stolen from immortals by fall out boy

The first person Daryl ever admitted anything to was a ten year old girl who went through the same thing.

Little Sophia Peletier had barely looked his way when her pa had been alive, and he couldn’t blame her for that; look at the wrong people and daddy gets angry and starts fighting, and he’s not begrudging a child safety. Not now and not ever.

Only then her dad had been torn to shreds by walkers and he’d found her at the edge of the quarry with shaking hands and a trembling, watery smile while her mother (Carol, he’s pretty sure that’s her name) puts Ed Peletier down like the dog he always deserved to be seen as.

Sophia doesn’t look up at him where she’s stirring up weeds with her toes. She just keeps on wriggling her legs and biting at her lips until they’re cracked and bleeding, and Daryl’s heart breaks for her.

“Hey,” he says, which isn’t a great opening line, but he says it soft and she doesn’t flinch, so he takes it as a win. He’s seen her and her ma flinch one too many times to feel anything but rage for Ed, but it’s settled down now, when they’re both as safe as they can be.

“Hi,” Sophia murmurs, and then, because even at ten years old she’s got better conversational skills than he does, “you’re Daryl, right?”

Daryl slips into a space next to her and nods once, twice. Kicks up some roots of his own because the conversation he’s gearing up to have isn’t going to be a fun one. “Mmhm. How you doin’?”

Because the thing is, Ed Peletier was a nasty piece of work and worthless to the end of fucking days, but he was her daddy and she’s got to be feeling some sort of shit. The kind of mixed-up emotions he’d had when he was twenty and his daddy overdosed on homemade meth.

He hadn’t gone to his funeral. Ed isn’t going to have one. He doesn’t think any of the camp, Sophia and Carol included, are going to mind.

“Tired,” Sophia tells him, and shoots him a smile that’s too world-weary for a girl who shouldn’t know anything except joy, “sad. I think. I’m not sure. Mom-. She’s sad, isn’t she? I should be.”

“Don’t gotta be anything,” Daryl says, and with lightning quick reflexes catches a wriggling frog in his hand, and passes it to Sophia when her smile brightens at the sight of it. She strokes the thing on the head before letting it go. “Think your mama’s sort of glad, honestly, but you’re allowed to feel anything you want.”

“He was bad.” Sophia kicks the water until it floods the edges of her frayed dress, and Daryl nods to coax her on. “He was a bad man, and a bad dad, and I didn’t like him a bit, but he was still-. He-.”

“Was family,” Daryl agrees, and thinks about Will Dixon’s bloody fists and slurs cut into his skin and a belt stained with blood, “I felt the same way when my daddy died.”

“Yours was mean, too?”

Sophia’s young. She’s a long-limbed kid with blond hair and blue eyes constantly rimmed with exhaustion, and she’s dealt with enough bullshit in her life that Daryl suddenly and desperately wants to protect her from everything. He can’t, but he’d like to try. Maybe talking about it will help her come to terms with it. And if it can’t help her, fuck, maybe it’ll help him.

“My daddy was a bad man who beat me bloody,” Daryl says, voice soft and slow, and Sophia -tough as nails despite everything, or maybe because of it, just nods, “from the time my ma died to the time he did. Weren’t a day that passed by without me getting a new bruise. I was twenty when he died. I never went to his funeral. Merle, my brother, he didn’t either. I was upset, but I was glad. That kind of violence, you grow up expectin’ it, and when it’s gone it feels wrong. It’s not. It’s better. It’s gonna be better.”

Sophia’s tiny hand covers his and squeezes with far more strength than he expects. “I’m sorry.”

“That’s okay,” Daryl mumbles, and watches a bird swoop low over the water and pick up a fish in its beak. Sophia tracks it with a smile that doesn’t reach her eyes. “You and your ma. You’re both fighters. You’ll get better. You’re a good kid, and she’d do anythin’ for you. And if anythin’ happens, kid, I’ll help you out if you need it.”

A tiny pinky finger links around his as Sophia meets his eyes head on. There’s a brave set to her jaw like she’s preparing for battle, and she’s got him wrapped around her finger metaphorically and physically. “Promise?”

Daryl shakes her finger. “Promise.”

**____________**

The second time he tells anyone, it’s to Carl after Lori dies.

(Carol knows, this much he’s sure of, but he’s never had a heart to heart with her, not like with her daughter, not like with Carl in the dreary pit of the prison.)

“I did it,” Carl tells him, and his hands are steady, “I shot her.”

Daryl stares at the concrete under their feet and thinks of how unfair the world is that this isn’t going to be the worst he sees, no matter how much Rick or any of the family try to protect him from the demons out there.

That killing his own mama in mercy, because Carl’s strong and brutal and brave, but never, ever cruel isn’t going to scrape the barrel of terrible things he’s going to see, and have to do.

Daryl grips at the solid stone and thinks about a bloodied boy on a too-big bed in his dad’s sheriff hat and wants to claw the world apart for him, tear the roots out and salt the earth.

“I’m sorry,” Daryl mumbles, because there’s no easy way to go about this, no easy way to help him through this, “your mama was a good lady.”

“Yeah.”

Carl sighs, sniffles, and Daryl looks away to give him privacy.

“My ma died when I was a kid, too,” Daryl tells him, because it feels like a fair trade, as painful as it is to think about even after all this time, “burned to death in our house, place went up with her. Didn’t feel real. Still doesn’t, sometimes.”

“It felt real to me,” Carl says, and there’s a twitch in his jaw, “I killed her. And- I know I had to, I know that, but she was my _mom_. And I killed her.”

“I know,” Daryl sighs, and rubs a hand over Carl’s shoulder. Carl, because he’s been surrounded by love from the moment he was born, leans into it instead of away. “I’m sorry, kid, I’m so goddamn sorry. Your ma’s proud of you, though, she’s always gonna be with you.”

Carl tucks his head right up against Daryl’s shoulder and Daryl holds back from startling by the skin of his teeth. The kid’s warm, face damp with tears and snot and body trembling, and Daryl hugs him back as tight as he needs because the alternative is making him feel alone, and he can’t do that. Lori’d come back to life and beat him bloody, and he’d get it.

“It’s gonna hurt,” Daryl says against the worn edge of his hat, “it’s gonna hurt for a while. But it’ll get easier, I promise. We’re here for you, all of us. And your ma’s memory, that’s gonna live on. Always, kid.”

Carl sniffs, sobs, and buries himself deeper into Daryl’s dirty vest. 

**____________**

Daryl tells Paul about his childhood when so drunk his legs won’t work.

Negan’s dead, the war’s over, his family’s scattered across three communities, and Paul Rovia is a person he can trust with his life, and has. Will again, probably.

He can trust him with this. (Just like he’s trusted Rick, Carol, Michonne, Hershel, Maggie, Glenn. Like he’s trusted his entire family, because they’ve all lived through hell now, they’re forged from menace and steel and hope.)

Paul’s staring at the stars, legs sprawled out across the roof of the trailer, and the metal creaks in the evening dark as it cools, and Daryl’s calm for the first time in what feels like forever.

He’s so fucking gorgeous like this, nose pointing to Orion and the north star, fingers tracing shapes above them, and Daryl’s heart clenches in his chest with something he can’t name.

It’s not like it even means to come out, is the thing; like the last hundred times he’s mentioned it, it comes from the back of his throat unbidden. It’s easier like that.

“My dad used to beat me bloody,” he tells the side of Paul’s face, watches his strong shoulders shift as he turns to look Daryl in the eye. There’s something fierce and warm in his eyes that does nothing but make Daryl want harder. “Used to whip me until I looked like kebab meat with eyes. Hate hearing belts get unbuckled now. Hate bein’ shouted at. Hate people movin’ too fast. It’s better than it was, but it’s still bad. It’s probably always gonna be bad.”

Paul hums into the night, brushes his nimble fingers over the curve of Daryl’s jaw, and Daryl’s breath trembles in his throat. “I’m sorry. I wish someone could have helped.”

“They did,” Daryl tells him, thinks of a grinning Carl holding his baby sister, of Carol leaning back against a wall with a smirk on her face, Rick calling him brother and never following it up with violence, of Glenn, Maggie, Beth, Tara, Rosita, Aaron, Eric. Everyone he’s ever loved and will ever love, who’s made the world easier to stand by virtue of existing. “Years late, but it’s easier to heal from this side of it.”

“Very philosophical,” Paul teases, and then bites at his full lower lip, “my family died when I was young. I was in the system for a long time, and then I wasn’t, and I didn’t really have anyone who really cared about me until Maggie. And then you, and everyone else. You know you sort of pick up strays?”

Daryl stares at the blue-white shine on Paul’s cheekbones and thinks about a man who’d been so consumed with rage he tried to kill his now-brother after one sentence. Thinks about a man who hadn’t known love or real affection in his life, who now has an entire family at his back, who now knows what loss feels like and isn’t scared shitless of it any more. Of a boy who stared at bloodstains on his blankets and thought about dying, over and over and over.

“Yeah,” he says, “I know.”

**Author's Note:**

> [tumblr](http://gaydaryl.tumblr.com/)


End file.
